Tag Archives: southwark

The afternoons are getting short and the evenings are getting long. Here’s a dark winter picture of one of those little old London streets that are “too narrow”. The solution? It’s blocked with bollards to keep the ratrunners out.

Here at At War With The Motorist we may have given the impression that there is a wasteful overuse of trucks in the UK, and especially in city centres, as we shift vast quantities of bottled watter and plastic spoons around the country. We may also have joined those who have criticised authorities who blame pedestrians and cyclists for being hit by construction vehicles, rather than ensuring that construction vehicles and their drivers are properly equipped and trained. Having found ourselves caught on Borough High Street on tuesday, however, we realise now that we were wrong, and that The Shard’s construction vehicles are actually not the enemy of pedestrians and cyclists, but are in fact the enemy of these poor Motorists, delayed for up to three minutes:

So you want to get from town to south-east London. South Bermondsey, Deptford or New Cross, perhaps. How about a nice wide cycle avenue through Southwark Park?

It’s a good width, a great surface, and pretty direct, with only gentle curves. The perfect cycle path. To the south, off-road routes continue all the way to New Cross and Deptford.

So you’ll take NCN route 4 east along the river from Tower Bridge and just turn right into Southwark Park. Right?

Oh.

To get to the path from the NCN route would require crossing the Jamaica Street dual carriageway, which, with continuous railings through the middle for quarter of a mile each way, requires a five minute detour around the Culling Circus roundabout, weaving through the traffic for the Rotherhithe Tunnel.